Dave and Adam are back after most hectic time of the year for a Microsoft Evangelist – fiscal year end. In this episode, we go off the tracks right out of the gate with a discussion of Adam’s recent trip to Disney World. After we gain traction, we muse on the many announcements coming down the pike for Microsoft developers with the recent enhancements to Windows Azure and the announcements from the Windows Phone 8 Summit.

(Note: portions of this program were edited out to protect little ears and their belief of a certain mythical creature with floppy ears.)

After a long hiatus, the Thirsty Developer is back to kick off Season 2. In this episode, we introduce the listeners to a new member of the Thirsty Developer team, Adam Hoffman. Dave and Adam wax poetic about the old Commodore 64 days and learn about Adam’s role at Microsoft as well a hobby project of his – the Cloud Car (aka. Car-Puter).

In this episode, Clark and Larry pull up a bar stool in Madison with Developer’s Steve Evans and Lance Larsen to discuss the latest tips, tools and guidance around using JavaScript in your application development.

Show 100! After 3 years and some change we finally hit Show #100. In this episode, Larry comes back and joins Dave and Clark for the meta of all meta episodes. We take a look back at shows of the past, plan ahead for MIX and talk about innovation in the industry and what developers should do to keep up.

After yet ANOTHER hiatus (holidays + work = no podcasts) and an operator FAIL on Dave’s part, Dave and Clark are back to discuss WebMatrix, Razor (the syntax) and NuGet. Also, Clark let’s us in on his upcoming travel schedule and Dave fetches the beer while he leaves Clark to his own devices. A little spoiler, it didn’t go well.

We're Back! After a little hiatus, Dave and Clark are back with special guest, Anthony Handley. In this episode we discuss how Silverlight is NOT dead, designing a lemonade stand, building a Windows Phone 7 app and did we mention… Silverlight is NOT dead.

Guest: Anthony Handley is the User Experience Practice Lead at Magenic. His focus is to create great digital experiences for the desktop and the web. With over 16 years working in interactive design and creative direction, he leads Magenic’s ux design team

In this episode, Dave and Clark lament about why podcasting is difficult, Expression Design vs. Adobe Illustrator, Windows Phone 7 versus the competition, Dave’s desire to learn how to build games, Silverlight for Embedded Devices and what the plans are for the Summer. As you can tell… it’s a show about nothing. Enjoy!

In this episode, Clark chats with Microsoft Senior Program Manager, Barclay Hill. Barclay is a member of the Visual Studio development team responsible for the Database Project tools found in Visual Studio Ultimate. Here they chat about features such as versioning, refactoring, static code analysis and unit testing for your database.

In this episode Clark had a chance to sit down with Microsoft’s Group Program Manager, Jay Schmelzer. Jay oversees a vast number of features across the Visual Studio product line. Here, Clark and Jay discuss: What does a release cycle look like in Visual Studio, Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO), SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010.

In this episode, Clark is joined by Roman Rubin and Ramya Parthasarathy from Wolters Kluwer as they discuss a project that they've been working on to convert an existing ASP.NET .NET 1.1 application over to Silverlight.

After a slight hiatus, Dave and Clark are back to catch up on what’s been going on and where we’ve been. We are all over the board on this show. There is so much to talk about we’re not even sure where to go with it all. We muse on the latest Zune update, Windows Phone 7, the release of Silverlight 4, and so much more.

In this episode, Clark joins up with Mark Tinderholt of Avanade at the recent MIX conference to discuss putting Silverlight through it's paces in the Enterprise.

Mark let’s us in behind the scenes of a large project he is participating on in which the team is working to re-platform a large insurance system consisting of disparate systems, such as ASP.NET and Java, and how they’re pulling the system together using technologies such as Silverlight 3, WCF and Prism.

In this episode, Clark sits down with Chip Aubry, lead technical architect from Tribal DDB. Here they discuss a recent project in which Tribal DDB created a web experience for McDonalds called the McNuggets Village that coincided with McDonald's Winter Olympics marketing campaign. Chip lets us in behind the curtain as he talks about how the project was implemented with technologies such as Silverlight, IE8 Web Slices and Azure.

In this episode, we grab some time with Microsoft Architect Evangelist, Kirk Evans, to discuss the all important question, "When NOT to use SharePoint". The conversation leads to Kirk laying out some of the new enhancements in SharePoint 2010 as well as discussing the finer points of going from a pure ASP.NET developer to a SharePoint developer. Kirk also gives Dave and Clark a lesson on how one can ramp up quickly in SharePoint development with a list of great resources.

I apologize for the recording quality of this interview. We are still trying to work out the kinks with recording some of our interviews through Skype. Please bear with us.

In this episode, Dave caught up with Hank Janssen of the Microsoft Open Source Technology Center at the recent CodeMash conference in Sandusky, OH. Hank and Dave discuss Microsoft’s contribution into the Open Source community including the PHP runtime and the Linux Kernel.

In this episode, we talk with Thomas Lewis, Director with the Developer Platform and Evangelism team at Microsoft. Thomas and his team run the MIX Online website and is also a part of the planning team behind the MIX conference. We talk with Thomas about the recent design overhaul on MIX Online as well as what people can expect at this year's MIX conference.

I apology for the quality issues on this one. We're working out the kinks on utilizing Skype for our remote calls.

In this episode we talk with Ram Cherala, Principal Program Manager in the Visual Studio Test Business, about the new testing tools and lab management features available in Visual Studio 2010. Also joining us are Developer Technical Specialist, Angela Dugan (again!), and Mark Nichols from Microsoft Consulting Services.

In this episode we talk with Ed Holloway, Senior Program Manager for Team Foundation Server, on the new setup experience with Team Foundation Server 2010. We are also happy to have Developer Technical Specialist, Angela Dugan, joining us as well.

In this episode, we sit down with Chris Woodruff and Tim Murphy after the nPlus1 Architecture Summit in Chicago to discuss design patterns, dependency injection and the community site for Software Architects, nPlus1.org.

After a search that spanned the globe, I am happy to introduce the new co-host of The Thirsty Developer, Clark Sell ( @csell5 ). Clark recently joined my team as a Developer Evangelist also based in Chicago, well he lives on the Wisconsin \ Illinois border so that is hardly Chicago.

Clark has been with Microsoft for over 4 years coming to the evangelist team from Microsoft Consulting Service. Having 12 years’ experience as solution architect, developer, tester, and product manager in the software industry, he’s mostly focused on Financial Services customers, line of business software and a quick jaunt through the halls of healthcare. Clark is also a Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Ranger. You know that TFS check-in policy that stops you from checking in if the build is broken? You can thank him for that one. Clark is no stranger to podcasting as he has another podcast in which he co-hosts called The Smackdown on DeveloperSmackdown.com you can also read his blog at csell.net

In this episode, I had a chance to sit down with Tim Heuer after the announcement at PDC 2009 of the Silverlight 4 Beta. Here we break down some of the many new features found in this next anticipated release of Silverlight.

In this episode I had a chance to catch up with one of my colleagues, John Bristowe, a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Canada. In this extended conversation, John and I discuss some of our favorite new features in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 with a Canadian geography lesson thrown in from John.

In this episode, I sit down with Jordan, Angela, Moungi, and Wade from our local DPE Tools team to discuss what's new in Visual Studio 2010. We discuss the Sku changes, the migration path, MSDN benefits, as well as the some of the new features found in Visual Studio 2010 to make development teams successful.

In this episode I have a conversation with Loke Uei Tan and Anand Iyer of the Windows Mobile team. We discuss the recently launched Windows Mobile 6.5 platform, the new marketplace and how developers can build applications that target the Windows Phone platform and possibly win a Microsoft Surface table in the process.

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I recently had a chance to sit down with Chad Campbell. Chad is a Silverlight MVP and recent Entrepreneur with the launch of his new company Ecofic. We discuss Chad's transition into the world of Entrepreneurship, the building of a product and how BizSpark has helped him get his business off the ground.

In this episode we sit down for a roundtable discussion with world renown speaker and author, David Chappell, and Paddy Srinivasan and Bharat Srinivasan of Cumulux to discuss their perspectives of the Windows Azure Platform and the shift to Cloud Computing.

We have a *Bonus* in this episode. Sometimes the conversation continues after the mics turn off. Sometimes those conversations are more insightful then the interview itself. Luckily I was able to grab my MicroTrack II and hit the record button to capture the continuing discussion. Stick around in the end as we’ve tacked this great discussion to the end of the episode.

In this episode, we bring everyone up to speed on the changes taking place in the Thirsty Developer offices. Also, Dave and Larry sit down to chat about…well… many things. When you get those two together you’re not quite sure where the conversation is going to go. If you were to boil it down, they talk about what’s coming ahead in the year to come in their jobs at Microsoft.

This week we are please to bring you an interview with Scott Seely (@sseely), who works as a developer / architect at Myspace. We talk with Scott about some of the advanced features of WCF and where services are headed in the future.

Twitter Feed

This week we are please to bring you an interview with Andy Theimer (@atheimer), who works for the startup company Lansare and on a side project called Recipe Bridge that aggregates content from across the internet.

Twitter Feed

This week we are please to bring you an interview with Dan Nawara (@dnawara) a front end designer about the HAML and SASS technologies. The first part of the interview was recorded at Bombacigno's J & C Inn in Chicago, IL; one of Dan’s favorite restaurants (until we got kicked out).

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Twitter Feed

The show was updated after publishing due to a problem with the show notes. Uncle’s Bob’s PDF of his original whitepaper was the original link (now a link to a blog article). The PDF was incorrectly picked up instead of the audio file. Sorry for any problems this caused.

This week we have an interview with Mike Tai and Matt Stratton of apartments.com. Mike and Matt share with us some of the things that make their website (which gets over 4 million unique visitors a month) scale.

This week we have an interview an interview with Chuck Heinzelman, a SQL Server MVP. Chuck is a Database Administrator who has been working with some of the new development oriented features of SQL Server 2008. Chuck blogs at: http://devplanet.com/blogs/memydatabaseandi/.

This week we have an interview with Chris Deweese, a software architect with REJIS about how they have applied SOA concepts and technology. Chris also discusses some of the issues that they have had with SOA. Our guest interview this week is Clint Edmondson, an architect evangelist based out of St Louis, MO.

This week we talk about the future of managed languages with Mark Strawmyer, a Microsoft MVP in the C# language. Before we dive into the future of languages, Mark and Larry talk about the past, including a trip down memory lane to discuss Visual Basic with and without line numbers. After the interview Dave and Larry catch up and talk about their first and next programming languages.

This week we have an interview with George Huey, an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation. George has been helping customer migrate their application databases from SQL Server 2000 and 2005 to Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

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This week Dave and Larry interview Erik Klimczak, the creative director of Clarity Consulting, who is also known as the XAML Ninja. We talk with Erik about developing touch based applications for Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 and then talk about the XAML stack.

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This week is an interview with Pete Prodoehl (AKA Raster) about Microformats. Before we dive into the topic Larry and Pete talk about his music, Creative Commons and the fact that he has been blogging for more than 11 years.

This week is an interview with Matt Terski, the President and co-founder of Serlio Software, a company that creates Case Complete. Matt and Larry talk about Use Cases and how they fit into the software development life cycle. You can follow Matt at the Use Case blog.

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In this week's interview Larry interviews Eric Willeke, an Architect with Inkubook. Inkubook is a start-up that allows users to self publish photo books. Inkubook picked the Silverlight platform to launch their new venture. Eric recently did a presentation to the Indianapolis .Net User Group (IndyNDA) on their experiences with adopting Silverlight this podcast is a sort of replay of that presentation. Eric shares the good, bad and ugly of adopting Silverlight 2 before it was in Beta!.

At MOSSCamp Chicago 2008 Larry interviewed Darrin Bishop, an independent Consultant with the Darrin Bishop Group and a Microsoft MVP on Windows SharePoint Services. They talk about how a .NET Developer can get started on developing on SharePoint, including how to setup your developer machine for SharePoint Development.

Dave and Larry caught up with the Microsoft Community Program Manager Constanze Roman and 2 Microsoft Mobile MVPs: Peter Nowak and Maarten Struys about some of the great announcements about Windows Mobile at the PDC. Specifically they talk about Silverlight 2 for Mobile and Live Mesh for Mobile clients.

In this episode we talk with Stephanie Saad, a group program manager with Microsoft. Stephanie talks about how Microsoft is already using many of the new features of Team Foundation Server that were announced at PDC.

In this episode we talk with Mike Rohde, an designer, artist and writer based out of the Milwaukee, WI area. Mike has a great technique for capturing notes at a conference, meeting, etc and has shared them with the world.

In this episode we talk with Rick Stratton and John Welborn, two of the founders of Feed.us. Feed.us is a cloud based, distributed content management written with Microsoft technology, but usable by any dynamic (and static) web platform.

Show Notes

Want to learn more about cloud computing? It will be a big topic of conversation at PDC 2008, register now before it sells out.Rick Mentioned giving the Thirsty Developer listeners a sneak peak of the service. The url is http://feedusdemo.com/, e-mail Rick (contact @ feed.us) and he will send you a userid and password if you tell him you heard about the site on the show.

The first ever (and hopefully annual) Codeapalooza event was held on September 6, 2008 in Wheaton, IL (a suburb of Chicago). The event was a partnership between the Chicago .NET User Group and the Chicago alt.net group. After the conference ended we sat down with some of the organizers and speakers and did a roundtable discussion that led to conversations about UX, languages and what you would like to do if you could "code for fun".

In this show Dave and Larry sat down with Ka Wai Cheung from We are Mammoth (blog) in downtown Chicago to talk about Software Factories. Dave and Larry first met Ka Wai at the Riapalooza event in Chicago at the end of May.

In this show Larry sat down with Jeffrey Palermo at his recent visit to the Wisconsin .NET User Group. Jeffery is a Microsoft MVP, CTO of Headspring and the organizer of the world famous "Party with Palermo". They discuss design patterns and Jeffrey's upcoming book. During the interview they change roles and Jeffrey asks Larry some questions about how he came to Microsoft, the role of an evangelist and Larry's recent series of blog posts Architecture By Baseball.

In this show we have a guest interviewer and co-host: Brian Gorbett is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft DPE based out of Chicago and a new teammate of Dave and Larry's. Brian is filling in for Dave while he is on vacation and will be a new contributor to the Thirsty Developer. Brian recently attended an Internal Microsoft conference, called Techready. While at the conference he recorded a couple of great interviews:

Scott Guthrie - ScottGu tells us about .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and answers some concerns about the upcoming MVC Framework and how it will and will not effect traditional web forms development. He also lets us know why his blog has been do quiet lately.

Mark Hindsbo - Mark is the general manager of Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism. He and Brian talk about DPEs role and shares his outlook on development and Microsoft's vision for software and services.

In this show we talk with Charles Sieg, a .NET developer by day and entrepreneur at night, about developing applications for the iPhone. Charles was inspired to create the AccelaStudy line of iPhone and iPod Touch applications for learning a new language by his need to carry around flash cards to learn the Turkish language.

In this show we have a roundtable at the recent RIAPalooza event in Chicago. We talk with two RIA experts: Josh Holmes of Microsoft (and the Code to Live Show) and Mike Labriola of Digital Primates and an Adobe Community Expert - Flex. Josh and Mike were fresh off their "Best and Worst Practices Building a RIA" session from the event.

Before the interview Dave and Larry talk about untested way of getting a generation 1 iPhone on the cheap as well as ways to "cheat" at the new Lego Indiana Jones xbox game.

In this show, we talk with Tim Heuer, a Microsoft Program Manager who works with technologies like Silverlight and Corrina Barber, a designer who works on the UIFX team with tools like Expression Blend. We caught up with Tim and Corrina at the RIAPalooza event in Chicago at the end of May. We talked about the designer and developer workflow.

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Blogs you should know

Dave shows his softer side

During the show Dave admits to watching Oprah Webcasts with his wife. One of the ones that caught his attention was Jill Bolte Taylor's story that was originally a TED Talk called stroke of insight. Check out the talk:

Thirsty Developer Halo Fragfest

Dave and Larry periodically join some friends and co-workers on XBOX Live for a little Halo 3 action and would like to invite our listeners to join us. Friend us on XBOX Live (GamerTags: BogeyD for Dave and Bottom9th for Larry). And join us:

In this show, we talk with Joe Stagner, who is Microsoft's Opinionated Misfit Geek and a program manager in the developer division community team. We caught up with Joe at the PHP|Tek 2008 conference in Chicago, IL

Show Notes

During the show we talked about a number of the open source initiatives at Microsoft, including:

In this show, we talk with Chris Pietschmann, a developer and a Microsoft MVP on the Virtual Earth platform. Chris tells us how he got started on Virtual Earth back in the beta of version 1.0 and gives us a good overview of the product.

Zune Contest

Our second Zune contest is still underway, but closes on June 2nd - so get your entries in. One lucky winner will receive a Zune80 with custom artwork etched from ZuneOriginals.net. This contest is easy enough. Just send us your constructive feedback on what Microsoft can do better to support your work/personal life in utilizing Microsoft's tools and technologies. Send your entries to thirstydeveloper [at] live.com with the subject header of 'Zune Contest'.

For this episode Larry flies solo, as Dave has been busy putting together the Code Fests: Hands on labs on some of the new features of .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. If you are in Wisconsin, Illinois or Indiana, and want to attend a Code Fest check Dave's Blog for details.

In this show, Larry sits down with Ed Glas, a program manager on the Team System team, who is responsible for the web load testing tools that are part of the product. We talked at the recent QAI Conference in Chicago, IL. Among other things, Ed gives us some insights (no promises) on features they are looking at for future releases of the product.

Our second Zune contest is still underway. One lucky winner will receive a Zune80 with custom artwork etched from ZuneOriginals.net. This contest is easy enough. Just send us your constructive feedback on what Microsoft can do better to support your work/personal life in utilizing Microsoft's tools and technologies. Send your entries to thirstydeveloper [at] live.com with the subject header of 'Zune Contest'.

In this weeks show, Larry sits down with some of the fine folks from Canopy Financial to discuss they started a business based on .NET technologies and tools. We also discuss Microsoft Start-Up Zone and how start-up companies can work with Microsoft to launch their businesses.

We also discuss the outcome of what Jeff Atwood was teasing us with Episode 18. A partner venture with Joel Spolsky to create a technical community portal called Stack Overflow. Joel and Jeff are also recording their weekly planning calls on offering that up as podcast, which is certainly a good listen.

We finish this week's episode by announcing our second Zune contest. One lucky winner will receive a Zune80 with custom artwork etched from ZuneOriginals.net. This contest is easy enough. Just send us your constructive feedback on what Microsoft can do better to support your work/personal life in utilizing Microsoft's tools and technologies. Send your entries to thirstydeveloper [at] live.com with the subject header of 'Zune Contest'.

In this episode we talk with our pal Server Girl (Beth Humphreys) about Hyper-V the new virtualization technology included in Windows Server 2008. Beth gives us a great overview of the technology and we chat about how developers can use Hyper-V technology to create a great developer rig.

In this episode, Dave and Larry sit down with Richard Campbell at the recent Deeper in .NET conference held in Milwaukee, WI. Richard is Product Evangelist for Strangeloop Networks and is co-host of .NET Rocks and RunAs Radio. Richard shares with us his insights on how to build scalable web applications.

This week's interview was recorded on location at MIX 08. We talk with Adam Kinney (aka the Silverlight Surfer), who is the technical evangelist for Silverlight.

This week we were joined in studio by our fellow evangelist, Beth Humphreys (aka Server Girl). She is an Infrastructure Architect Evangelist who spends her days (and many nights) making servers safe for developers and architects.

This week we talk with Ed Chaltry, the CTO of Centare Group and a Certified ScrumMaster about SCRUM, which is an Agile process that can be used to manage and control complex software and product development using iterative, incremental practices.

Blogs you should know

This week we talk with Ben and Norb from Frozen Code Base, a game development studio based out of Green Bay, WI. They have released their first title ScrewJumper on XBOX Live Arcade and have a second title coming out soon. Ben is the founder of the company and Norb is their chief designer. As we talked about the game development process and creating games for XBOX live hilarity ensues.

This week Larry sits down with C# MVP, Mark Strawmyer, to share stories of projects of old and utilizing some of the new analytic features found in Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite to measure product complexity.

DevCamps are un-conference events that are starting to pop up in the developer community that provide a casual environment and a lot of energy for like-minded developers to come together and learn from one another about a particular technology area. In this episode of The Thirsty Developer, we sit down with George Durzi and Kevin Marshall, from Clarity Consulting, who recently hosted a DevCamp around SharePoint and affectionately termed it MOSSCamp.

Also, in this episode, we announce the winner of our first listener contest. Thomas Emge correctly answered the question of "When and Where is the kick off launch event for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008", and that of course is in Los Angeles, CA on February 27th, 2008. Microsoft is hosting numerous launch events across the world. To find one if your area, head on over to http://heroeshappenhere.com.

Tim Landgrave is an architect with the consulting division of Microsoft, based out of Louisville, KY. This is the second in our series of interviews from the IndyTechfest in Indianapolis, IN. Tim spends a lot of time talking with customers about how to get the most of the .NET framework and other Microsoft technologies, and we spent a few minutes with him discussing the current state of the framework. You can check out Tim's blog at http://timlandgrave.com.

Chad Campbell is a software developer with Crowe Chizek, based out of Louisville, KY. We met up with Chad a few weeks ago at the IndyTechfest in Indianapolis, IN, where he was set to give a talk called "Silverlight on Every page". We caught up with him at the speaker's room and asked him to talk about his technique for using Silverlight 1.1. You can Check out Chad's blog for more thoughts and Silverlight at http://cornucopia30.blogspot.com/.

The Thirsty Developer is on the air with the inaugural episode of the new podcast series. For this episode, we traveled to Madison, WI to interview Adam Salvo, who is a lead developer with Terso Solutions. We talked with Adam about their recent migration to Visual Studio 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2008. They were early adopters of VS 2008 / TFS under the "go live" provision of the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 EULA. We will hear about the features in Visual Studio 2008 that attracted them to an early adoption.

Terso Solutions builds and manages intelligent enclosures (which are cabinets and refrigeration units) that hold medical supplies used in hospitals and research labs. In addition to the hardware devices themselves, Terso has a software back end infrastructure that is created with BizTalk Server, Windows Servers and customer .NET